


a positive interaction

by Prim_the_Amazing



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 12:42:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15024851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: He just needs some practice, and talking into a mirror isn’t going to do it. He takes more after his mother anyways.Simmons needs to be prepared to look his father in the eyes.





	a positive interaction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zanezell155](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanezell155/gifts).



He just needs some practice, and talking into a mirror isn’t going to do it. He takes more after his mother anyways. 

Simmons needs to be prepared to look his father in the eyes. 

 

All joking aside, the hologram room doesn’t create thinking, sentient beings. That would be insanely powerful, and if it were possible then Project Freelancer certainly would’ve come up with it instead of that, quite frankly,  _ disturbing _ torture stuff. What it does instead is take a visual scan (Simmons has pictures), sample enough audio clips (Simmons has videos), and then it does some very complicated brain scan thingies that he pretends to understand to come up with expected behavior. An empty simulation of a person, like a more advanced chatbot. But that’s alright, Simmons isn’t going to be so bold as to try for a deep, personal conversation where he learns some unexpected facts about his father and they grow closer as family members. He just wants to have a positive interaction. A handshake, eye contact, a smile and a nod. 

That’s not too much to ask for, is it? 

He makes sure that Grif is napping, that Sarge is busy repairing Lopez, that Donut is off playing with Caboose. He dims the lights a little to hide any imperfections in the hologram from his notice. It needs to be as lifelike as possible, to be proper practice. 

He clears his throat and says: “Start simulation.” 

And then, after a brief shimmer of light, his father appears. There he is. Just as he remembers him: broader shoulders than Simmons, a jaw stronger than it was sharp, more grey in his hair than there should be for a man his age even if he was old, his eyes a murky grey-blue and an impatient twist to his mouth. A default scowl on his face. The only things Simmons got from him was his thin lips and his long fingers. 

He’d probably look a bit older, if it was the real him. It’s been years. 

Simmons had been expecting this, was the one who  _ engineered _ this, but he still freezes up at the sight of him. He feels like someone just shoved him in front of a podium in front of hundreds of expecting viewers while he’d just been out to buy some groceries. 

“Well?” his father says in response to his tongue tied silence, crossing his arms. Wasting his time. 

“Um,” Simmons says, “Ah, uh, that is--”

His father looks like he just bit into a lemon, gives him a dirty look. He doesn’t even have to say anything.  _ If you’re just going to stutter nonsense, spare everyone and just don’t say anything at all.  _

“Don’t _ rush  _ me,” he defends himself, voice cracking, and then immediately yelps, “End simulation!” 

His father disappears before Simmons has to see his reaction to  _ that.  _ He’s gotten too used to talking to just Grif and the others. And he’s still doing the… voice thing. His father is not a fan of the voice thing, and honestly Simmons isn’t either. 

He takes some deep breaths, rubs his face, shakes it off. Fresh start. This is what the practice is for. 

“Restart simulation,” he says neatly, voice a little quieter than normal to make sure he has it under control. It’s a habit that he’d forgotten about, but slips back into easily now. 

His father reappears, and Simmons is proud to say that he doesn’t freeze like a deer in headlights. 

“Hi,” he says, swallowing the um before it can escape. 

“Hello, Richard,” his father replies, looking somewhere vaguely over Simmons’ shoulder. His father did that a lot, he recalls. Didn’t really look like he was pay attention when he spoke with Simmons. But shouldn’t he be paying attention, given the context of the-- the scenario? The reunion? His son returning after many years, with significant accomplishments under his belt. 

But, well, the simulation isn’t that advanced. It’s just drawing from Simmons’ memories. Expected behavior and responses only, no surprises. Simmons can’t really remember his father paying keen attention to him, so it isn’t going to happen here. Whatever, he can work with it. 

“It’s been a while,” he says, feeling clumsy and dumb. There are thoughts in his head, but he’s having a hard time getting a grasp on them, on articulating them and turning them into words. Scatterbrained. That’s the word for it. 

His father doesn’t grace this with a response, just looks at him before his eyes drift away again. 

The simulation is clearly lackluster. Obviously,  _ obviously _ his father would know why he’s visiting, would have heard.    
“I’ve um,” he bites his tongue at the slip up, but forges on ahead despite the flicker of annoyance on his father’s face. “I’ve revealed a huge military scandal?” 

“Are you asking me a question?” he asks, unimpressed. 

Always criticizing the way he  _ talks.  _

He rides out a spike of anger, chokes on too many words and ends up not even remotely knowing what to say. 

“I just asked  _ you _ a question,” his father prompts him. 

“No,” he says, submissive. 

No surprises. This conversation feels utterly, bone deep familiar. 

“Then don’t talk like you are,” he says sternly. Imparting a repeated lesson that’s seemingly never going to sink in. 

“Sorry,” he says, more a rote response than anything genuine. If he wants to move past this and try and have any kind of productive conversation here then he has to go through the motions first. 

“Don’t be sorry, just don’t do it again,” he says, even though Simmons  _ knows _ that he would’ve pressed for an apology if Simmons hadn’t offered it up first. It feels like anger is boiling away all of his thoughts, and that isn’t good,  _ one _ of them has to be focused on the goal of the mission instead of winning the argument. 

This isn’t an argument. This isn’t supposed to be an argument. 

“Right,” he says. Three monosyllabic responses in a row.  Falling back into old habits. 

His father’s gaze is straying again, uninterested in the conversation. Content to just nitpick the way Simmons said something, and then ignoring the actual content as it suits him. 

He consciously makes himself not grind his teeth. It’s bad dental hygiene. 

“I revealed a huge military scandal,” he repeats. 

“Did you?” his father asks, skeptical. 

Why would he lie about something like that? Something so huge and over the top? What has he done to make his father suspect him of being a liar? Certainly nothing he’s ever been  _ caught _ for, so it doesn’t count. 

_ “Yes,” _ he says. 

“You and who else?” he asks. 

“Me and-- and my team,” he says, caught of guard. 

“Just one ‘and’ will do. How many people are on your team?” 

“Four.” 

“Anyone else?” 

“The-- another team as well.”

“No ‘the’, Richard. How many people on the other team?” 

Caboose, Tucker, Tex (no), Church (not any longer). “Three.” 

“Any more people that helped you, Richard?” 

“A man called Agent Washington.” 

“So you managed it all on your own, with only the assistance of  _ eight other people.  _ Astounding.” 

“It was a big deal, dad!” he says, and now his voice is doing that thing where it rises into an indignant shrill pitch. His father gives him a look and his mouth clacks shut so quickly that his teeth ache. 

“So what do you want?” he asks. 

Can’t he  _ guess.  _

“Just--” he mentally strangles the urge to repeat the word, to stutter, fumbles for a way to continue the sentence that won’t give his father a way to escape responding by instead pointing out that he’d said it wrong, “wanted to make sure you knew. It’s in the news. It seemed like… you should know.” 

That isn’t the honest answer. He should be able to guess the honest answer himself. 

“Well, now I know,” he says. “You managed to reveal a ‘huge military scandal’ and you deserve one ninth of the credit. Congratulations.” 

He says ‘huge military scandal’ like it was something tame, like people weren’t being used and killed and tortured. Like Simmons didn’t almost  _ die _ in the process. 

His temper snaps in two. 

“More than _ you’ve _ ever done,” he says, and he feels his face twist up in fury, his voice going nasty. Winning an argument, a _ real _ argument, is all about saying the most hurtful, shocking thing, about getting a reaction, stunning them silent. He’s always known this. “All you’ve done is been born, get money, been invited to work at a company by a friend, and then done nothing but fuck around playing golf and having meetings and fucking the secretary--” 

_ “You’ve _ done more than _ me?” _ his father interrupts, laughs. He knows how to properly argue too. “You didn’t so much as graduate college, Richard. You couldn’t even do that. The only job you’ve ever had is one where they accept any bum that throws themselves at them to be cannon fodder, and would you have managed to get any other job? Without my connections pulling the strings? And if you’ve managed to become a man and fuck a woman yet, I’d  _ love _ to know.” 

The trick to being cruel well is to only say true things. 

“I--” Simmons says, and then his father talks over him like he always does whenever the urge strikes him,  _ cheating.  _

“You disappoint me, Richard,” he says, like he doesn’t say that with every single inch of his body every single day, with the tone of his voice, the way his eyes never focus on him for longer than five seconds at a time. 

“Dad--” 

“No! What have I told you about excuses?” 

“To--”

“That was a rhetorical question.” 

If he hadn’t answered, it abruptly  _ wouldn’t  _ have been a rhetorical question. He knows this with every fiber of his being. 

“Why are you doing this to me, Richard?” he asks, sounding utterly disappointed. Like Simmons is a relentless fuckup, like every single thing he’s ever done has been a mistake, and an intentional one at that, entirely avoidable. 

_ Why are you doing this to me? _ What, existing? 

“Your mother and I gave you all that you wanted.” 

Now  _ there’s _ a lie. 

“Why aren’t you being fair to your parents?” he asks, accusatory. 

_ Fair?  _ Why isn’t  _ he _ being fair? Like he’s the one that’s already assumed the results of their actions, and every action that they’re going to take-- a complete and utter failure. Like he’s the one not giving them a chance, not hearing them out, not listening to them, not looking at them. Simmons has been hyper aware of his parents for as long as he could remember, over analyzing every single word and glance, as if he could find the clue to pleasing them, impressing them, to see if he could find any kernel of genuine interest there. Any proof at all that his existence wasn’t just born of a vague sense of obligation, of keeping up appearances, and kept being so past his birth.  _ He _ has put  _ thought _ into them. He has sunk in so much time and effort-- his entire childhood, even. And past that, when he was light years away, when he didn’t even see or hear them and they didn’t see or hear him. Wondering what they would find impressing, what course of action he could take that they would approve of most of if they ever somehow heard of it. Wasting first his childhood and then his adulthood on them. Did they think about him too, when he wasn’t around to force them to with his presence? He can’t even picture it. 

His father continues talking, and he barely listens, letting it wash over him instead. All of the arguments blur together after a while anyways (and can this even be called an argument, he hasn’t spoken up in minutes, the natural order of things reinstated), points repeating. Why can’t you be more like so-and-so’s son? This was a mistake. Helping was a mistake. You’re a mistake. You’re--

Simmons reaches up to press down on his temple, try and push the growing headache away, and meets a helmet. Remembers that this is just a hologram. 

_ “End simulation!” _ he shouts. 

His father flickers away, and it’s suddenly abruptly quiet in the room. His brain feels like it’s-- buzzing. Vibrating. Scatterbrained again, not sure what to do. 

Try again? 

He instantly recoils from the idea, utterly convinced that the conversation would just end up in the exact same place no matter what he said, no matter what he tried, now matter how many times he attempted it. He’s learned nothing new today, it’s impossible with this thing that just draws from what he already knows but-- he got a refresher. 

How could he have thought that he would have been able to solve his father with an afternoon of practice, after going eighteen years of constantly trying to met with failure after failure? It was a _ stupid _ idea. 

“Hey,” Grif says, and every single inch of Simmons startles, his heart thundering in his chest. His eyes shoot to him, standing in the doorway of the room. Had he heard? 

He can’t see his face because of the helmet, but-- his shoulders are loose, his voice a casual drawl. Simmons must be safe. 

“Hm?” Simmons says, not trusting himself to open his mouth right now. It’s easier just to go quiet and ride it out when his father really gets going, and it’s hard to dredge himself back out of that mindset. 

“You’ve gotta see the stupid shit Caboose and Donut are getting up to,” he says. “Sarge is gonna lose the rest of his marbles.” 

“Mm,” he hums. He’s being weird, arousing suspicion. Gotta talk. Unglues his mouth, licks his lips, forces himself to say “Okay.” 

“Come on then,” he says, and Simmons stands up (he’d gone to his knees somewhere there), and walks over to him. No accusations. Grif isn’t noticing him being weird. It’s fine. He’s fine. 

He lets Grif’s prattling wash over him, soaking it in and not really paying attention at the same time, making occasional noises to keep him going. Grif and Simmons, all of their conversations are kind of the same, familiar. Following the same beats, again and again. Different from his father though, doesn’t make him want to crawl out of his skin. 

Comfortable, that’s the word for it. 

He won’t be contacting his father, he decides. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by zanezell155's [comic!](http://fav.me/dcf6ar8)


End file.
